The Senate vote to repeal the 17-year old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy against gay men and lesbians serving openly in the armed forces removes a reason that many elite colleges have cited for barring the Reserve Officers Training Corps from recruiting on their campuses, reports the New York Times. Already, the presidents of Harvard, Yale and Columbia have issued statements expressing interest in bringing back the R.O.T.C. But it is not clear whether there will be enough student interest on those campuses to warrant its presence. The R.O.T.C., which has units on 327 campuses nationwide, was sent packing from several Ivy League and other prominent campuses in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the firestorm of student protests against the Vietnam War. More recently, though, it has faced opposition because of discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the military. Eileen M. Lainez, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said Monday that it would be “premature to speculate” on plans for new R.O.T.C. units. Diane H. Mazur, a law professor at the University of Florida and a former Air Force officer, said she doubted whether the military would reinstate the R.O.T.C. at Ivy League colleges because it is expensive to operate there, particularly for the relatively few number of students the services are likely to recruit…
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